ERATES: A Computer Program for Calculating Time-of-Use, Block, and Demand Chargesfor Electricity Usage (Version 1.0). User's Guide and Reference Manual

摘要

ERATES (Electricity Rates) is a computer program for calculating monthly andannual electricity costs for a facility, building, or system under a variety of electric utility rate schedules. Both kWh usage and maximum kW demand charges can be included in these costs. Most typically these calculations will be used to support engineering-economic studies which assess the cost-effectiveness of energy conservation measures or measures to shift electricity use from on-peak to off-peak time periods. With ERATES a user can set up time-of-use-rate schedules, block-rate schedules, and demand-rate schedules and save these schedules to a disk file. The user can then compute monthly and annual electricity costs with ERATES, given hourly or monthly kWh and kW demand data for a facility, building, or system. ERATES is a menu-driven, interactive program, designed to be run on an IBM-PC or compatible microcomputer under DOS version 3.0 or higher, with or without a hard disk. ERATES block-rate and demand-rate schedules can be imported by the NIST BLCC 4.0 computer program for use in computing the life-cycle cost of buildings and building systems. ERATES is not intended for use by utilities in setting up or administering electric rate schedules.